Earl Scruggs tribute draws fans, Country Music Hall of Famers and more

Click here to see a photo gallery from Sunday's tribute, the Earl Scruggs, A Celebration of Life ceremony at the Ryman Auditorium (photo: Sanford Myer/The Tennessean).

Sunday afternoon at a near-packed Ryman Auditorium, friends, family and admirers of Country Music Hall of Famer Earl Scruggs gathered to pay tribute to the man whose distinctive banjo style transformed his instrument and helped create the music now known as "bluegrass."

Scruggs' banjo is sitting center stage, as his friends sing in his honor and speak to his memory.

Before singing "Gone Home" with The Whites at the memorial service on Sunday, Grand Ole Opry member Skaggs spoke about his friend.

Scruggs heard Skaggs play when Skaggs was a boy, and he immediately offered Skaggs an opportunity to try out for the Flatt & Scruggs television program. The audition went well, and Skaggs' first major media exposure came on that syndicated show.

"He didn't have to do that, but he did," Skaggs said. "He was always looking not at himself but at the next generation, always looking ahead. He was the most humble musician I think I've ever met."

Skaggs looked to the Ryman balcony and ask for a show of hands.

"How many people in here play the banjo?" he asked, and nearly a third of balcony members' hands rose.

"Look at that harvest," Skaggs said.

Also during the service, Bela Fleck stood to offer some words about hearing Scruggs' banjo for the first time.

Fleck was a child in New York when he heard Scruggs playing his dynamic, three-finger roll on the theme song of television show The Beverly Hillbillies.

"The most powerful sound I've ever heard," Fleck said. "I'd heard the sound that made everything make sense to me, for the first time..... I've heard a similar story from many people in this room. It was not unlike the moon landing, or the falling of the Berlin Wall: Where were you when it happened?"

Fleck is credited as one of the banjo's great innovators, as he happily brings the instrument into classical, jazz and other music that wasn't always associated with the banjo. But he forever defers to Scruggs.

"Nothing us so-called modernists have done could have happened without Earl," he said, switching into the second person as he addressed Scruggs directly. "You'll always be the greatest banjo player in the world."

The ceremony, which began at 2 p.m., concluded at about 4:15. Check back later for Tennessean music columnist Peter Cooper's commentary on the tribute.